Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court has granted the same right to the country's Christian Copt civil servants to take a one-month's paid leave from work to visit Jerusalem that Egyptian Muslim civil servants get to take the pilgrimage to Mecca, the Egypt Independent news website reported Sunday.

Islam generally requires Muslims to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime, and Saturday's ruling now provides civil servants from Egypt's Coptic Christian minority the same paid time off from work for a Jerusalem pilgrimage. The court based its ruling on the country's constitutional guarantees.

The Coptic presence in Egypt is said to date to the early period of Christianity. In recent years, Copts have been targeted by Islamic extremists.

The trip by Pope Tawadros II, who came to take part in the funeral of a local Coptic bishop, aroused great controversy in Egypt. Some critics argued that the visit violated the ban on pilgrimages to Israel that was imposed in 1980 by Tawadros’ predecessor, Pope Shenouda III, following the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.